And...

Writing About Film

They Sell What They Wanna Sell

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, self-imitation is praise
beyond compare.

The Addams Family (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1991)

In These Times, 1991

The Addams Family TV show, which
ran for two seasons in the mid-1960s, was raucous, occasionally subversive
fun, which probably accounts for its perseverance
as a cultural referent, particularly among those of us who constitute the "leftysomething" generation.
I looked eagerly to Paramount's movie adaptation for more of the same, but
unfortunately, what it accomplishes visually it
loses in translation.

Personally, I adored the show's chaotic texture, that
the Addamses were such a bizarre, dysfunctional, and yet completely happy
family. I identified with their otherness, and found comfort that there was
at least one other household in the world that didn't possess an easy chair.
On one hand the Addames were
tied to the passé conventions of Western civilization — their
tchotchka-filled home, Gomez's pinstriped suits, and Morticia's perfect manners — and
on the other, to the romance of mid-60s American society in upheaval — their
commune-like self-sufficiency, the parents' open sexuality, and their eccentric
cultural tastes.

The film first looks to be following in the TV program's
quirky footprints, but it soon becomes apparent that its aesthetics are merely
superficial.
The movie's strength is visual, as it fleshes the black-and-white cutouts
of the show into vibrant animation. Its texture is thoroughly contemporary,
evoking any one of Tim Burton's various faux-blockbusters: not so much dark
and brooding as tinged with music video-flash and ambience. As in 1964, the
Addams's gothic mansion towers ominously above the family plot, and the air
again prickles with macabre humor, verbal (and actual) dueling, and gruesomely
suggestive innuendo. Morticia is creepily beautiful, Gomez is bug-eyed and
dashing, and Uncle Fester still sucks lightbulbs. The roles are perfectly
captured, respectively, by Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, and Christopher Lloyd,
though equal credit belongs to makeup designer Fern Buchner and costumer
Ruth Myers. As for the other players, Christina Ricci as Wednesday, the youngest
Addams child, is particularly notable: she carries the haunting beauty of
a fine-lined cartoon and imbues her character with a sublime morbidity. In
fact, when Wednesday straps brother Pugsley into an electric chair for a
round of her favorite game, "Is There a God?" one almost believes
the film is going to take off.

But the plot, concerning the mysterious reappearance
of Uncle Fester after a 25-year absence, is by far the movie's weakest
spot, and the difficulty
it caused during shooting is already legend. Fear of the story's vacuousness
leading to the movie's downfall, especially as costs kept rising, may well
have been the final incentive for cash-hungry Orion to sell the production
to Paramount (the film's final tally is approximated to be at least $30 million).
Even after numerous script revisions, director Barry Sonnenfeld acknowledges
that the film "doesn't have a really good plot."[Entertainment
Weekly] His tactful admission is given emphasis by the movie's frenetic
action and overflowing bag of visual tricks: moving cameras, odd angles,
and special
effects abound.

The film's strongest — and most repulsive — similarity
to a commercial TV show is its product-placement: one segment features a
now-ambulatory Thing
carting a wagonload of neatly stacked Federal Express packages around an
office. This and a shameless plug for Sally Jessy Raphael are by way of the
talents of Rogers and Cowan, Inc., credited onscreen alongside Huston, Julia,
and world famous mumbler (ex-MC) Hammer, who provides the film's torpid theme
music.

In what seems a desperate attempt to camouflage that the cinematic product
is so slavishly emulative of the sitcom, Sonnenfeld and producer Scott Rudin
fill the movie's production notes with elegiac references to Charles Addams,
the longtime New Yorker satirist who featured the family in many
of his cartoon tableaus. Sonnenfeld goes so far as to claim that "I
felt as if the entire body of [Addams's] work was looking down on me, giving
encouragement
and making sure I was faithful to those images." The movie's onscreen
attempts to refer to Addams's old drawings are equally pandering. The opening
shot, for instance, is a live-action pan-up of Addams's well-known image
of oblivious Christmas carolers about to be drenched in boiling oil by the
mischievous family. Such devices, although amusing, work more effectively
on the page than on the screen, and serve only to halt the action as the
visual one-liners sink in. The filmic references to Addams's sketches do
no more than coax a knowing nod from those who make the necessary connections.
For others, I suspect, the joke passes right on over.

The silence surrounding the original show, whose rights were retained by
Orion, becomes increasingly obvious as the publicity surrounding the film
grows more hysterical. The irony is that Addams himself was integral to the
old show's creation: he named the characters especially for it (despite being
told he couldn't christen Pugsley "Pubert"), and developed the
sitcom's concept. If Sonnenfeld and Co. give their protests a rest, they'll
realize that so desperately trying to link themselves with the icon of Addams's
cartoons is futile anyhow — it does nothing for filmgoers who
grew up on the TV show and who, for good or naught, hold no such literary
pretensions.

The Addams Family film has its strengths: it's often chaotically
hilarious, shows occasional flashes of subversive wit, and is visually dynamic.
There's
no difference to the movie, however, and it fades quickly in the
memory. The film's huge opening weekend, however — the largest-grossing
since this summer's Terminator 2 — prove that image and style are
the only qualities which really count. Who knows? the ironic — and
inevitable — result of The Addams Family's success will probably
be a TV spinoff. Sonnenfeld and Rudin don't understand how truly original
they are; next time
they won't
feel the need to justify themselves. The reassuring repetition of past experience,
as exemplified by syndicated TV, is one of the lone constants in our frightening
world — with the new world order on the horizon, it's no wonder that
people need a comforting squeeze from the old electric teddy bear.